The true story behind Netflix's Lost Girls is horrifying
11 March 2020, 14:43
Lost Girls is Netflix's latest crime drama based on the real-life murder of Shannan Gilbert, by the notorious Long Island serial killer, believed to have murdered 10 to 16 girls, and still unidentified.
How to ramp up the eeriness on a crime show? Make it based off something that's actually happened.
Netflix's latest true crime film, Lost Girls, is the perfect example of how to take a real event, or in this case, the notorious Long Island serial killer, and it make it into some seriously binge-worthy viewing.
The film, which is released on 13th March to the streaming platform, and stars Amy Ryan, Dean Winters and Miriam Shor, provides a drama-based insight into the murder of Shannan Gilbert, who was one of 10 to 16 other girls killed by the still un-captured and unidentified bandit of New York.
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Though the film is fiction and has been created off the back of a book with the same name, it's based specifically on the murder of 24-year-old Shannan, who goes missing, and her mother's quest to find her, before uncovering the gruesome reality of what was happening to young sex workers.
The actual killer, also referred to as the Craigslist Ripper, murdered these women over a period of 20 years, and targeted prostitutes, before leaving their bodies in the area off the South Shore, in Long Island. Once Shannan had been found, at least 10 other sets of remains were found in bin bags between 2010 and 2011.
Shannan's mother, Mari, who is played in the film by Amy Ryan (The Office), was murdered by her other daughter in 2016. She was found with multiple stab wounds.
Shannan's body wasn't recovered until a year and a half after she disappeared in a swampy marsh, but investigations have since found that on the night she was murdered, she had called 911 from Oak Beach, where the killer struck, saying that someone was trying to murder her.
She called three times, and the first call lasted approximately 22 minutes, but officers were never sent.
Other women's bodies that were recovered from the scene in the days that followed include fellow sex workers, Melissa Barthelemy (who vanished in 2007), Megan Waterman, Amber Lynn Costello and Maureen Brainard-Barnes, who were all found within 500 feet of each other.
The unnamed killer got his nickname 'Craigslist Ripper' because it was quickly discovered that each woman that had been dismembered advertised their sex services on the selling website.
Mari Gilbert was kept in the public eye for her work on trying to unmask the killer, and pressed law enforcement for a homicide investigation, after Shannan's death was ruled 'inconclusive'.
Police have since set up a public website that allows people to see updates on the case.
Lost Girls is streaming on Netflix from 13th March
